12 March 2025 |

If you write it, they won’t come.

By Tracey Wallace

The online discourse about content marketing is all over the place. SEO works. SEO is dead. Webinars work. Webinars are dead. Long-form content works. Long-form content is dead. 

Most of these takes are, well, takes. There’s little data backing them up, and even if there were, the larger questions around website information architecture and interlinking, promotion and distribution strategy (i.e. go-to-market), alignment with product marketing and releases, or any of the other more tactical, but less tangible strategic background isn’t there. 

Here’s the truth of it: content marketing can’t work on its own. If you write it, they won’t come. 

That doesn’t mean you need to focus the majority of your efforts on distribution, though. Distribution is only one-third of the equation. Plus, distribution channels are sophisticated, and often require their own experts (lifecycle, social media, PR, paid media). No content marketer has time and rarely the expertise to focus so much of their time on distribution and promotion. 

  • Should you be aligned with distribution channels? Heck yes. 
  • Should the performance metrics from those channels help direct and refine your strategy? Absolutely. 

But, again, distribution is only one-third of the equation. To succeed, content marketing needs:

  1. Web: A clear and consistent site information architecture, UX research and CRO testing, and an interlinking strategy
  2. Product marketing: Alignment with product marketing and product release cycles (i.e. release marketing and governance) 
  3. Go-to-market: Activated distribution channels, i.e. lifecycle, social media, paid media, internal comms and PR. 

I’d venture to guess that for places where content marketing, even an old-school gated ebook, isn’t working, it’s because parts of the equation above are missing rather than the content strategy is amiss (though, topically, the content could indeed be a miss for the audience). 

As we come up to the end of Q1, and if you are struggling with content marketing performance and success, I’d start by making sure you have a supportive foundation in place. Then, I’d map back content strategy to the information architecture, release marketing, and what is working in GTM channels.